Scythe Mugen MAX

The X79 setup used where the thermal readings took place were with an MSI X79MA-GD45 motherboard, Core i7 4960X, 8GB of DDR3 system memory, 1TB Seagate HDD, Radeon HD 4870, and Lian Li PC-A05N enclosure. A daily snapshot of Ubuntu 14.10 was running on the host while manually upgrading to the latest development Linux 3.17 kernel.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite a wide variety of benchmarks were run including x264, compiling the Linux kernel in parallel, C-Ray, and MP3 encoding to look at the cooler's performance in a range of workloads. For a basic comparison, the Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 HSF was also benchmarked on the same setup.

While the Xigmatek cooler used is a rather good heatsink and what I normally run with the i7-4960X setup, the Mugen MAX successfully beat it out. As shown by the chart, the Scythe heatsink was almost constantly doing better. The i7-4960X with the Mugen MAX had a low temperature at idle of 25C, average temperature under load of 39C, and a peak of 50C.

Though Phoronix really doesn't focus much on cooling articles and I only look at a nominal number of new heatsinks each year, overall I am quite happy with the Scythe Mugen MAX. The performance of this air cooler was great with the high-end i7-4960X and i7-5960X setups, installation was straightforward once going through the directions, and it lived up to expectations. At the end of the day the only complaints about the Mugen MAX are that it's currently hard to find (at least via US Internet retailers) and as such it's also carrying a bit of a high price for an air cooler. For the few Mugen MAX units I've found new, within the US they've been on eBay and are currently selling for $80+ USD.